


happy birthday

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ADHD, Anxiety Disorder, Bokuto Koutarou Has ADHD, Cute, Dorks in Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protective Bokuto Koutarou, Soft Boys, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, akaashi keiji has anxiety, bokuto has an owl hyperfixation, soft bokuaka, they go on a birthday not-date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:14:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26614294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: 'Over the years it slowly became a tradition between Bokuto Koutarou and Akaashi Keiji to spend the day before each of their birthdays together, just the two of them.'Bokuto has ADHD, Akaashi has anxiety, and they go on a very cute trip for Bokuto's birthday.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 171





	happy birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I am pretty much just projecting onto Bokuto and Akaashi here, but I hope that I made it fluffy enough to be enjoyable :)  
> Thankyou for reading <3

Over the years it slowly became a tradition between Bokuto Koutarou and Akaashi Keiji to spend the day before each of their birthdays together, just the two of them. 

It was 9 am, September 19th, the trees were painted in gold and flame as they always were around his birthday, and Bokuto Koutarou was going to be 18 in 15 hours. 

He’s been meaning to buy new bed covers for a while now, to trade the yellow, black and white gingham print that his mother had bought him to celebrate the start of his first year at Fukurodani for something more clinical and mature. 

Right now, sitting on the covers that had been a silent listener to the whispers of many sad nights, that held years of Akaashi-shaped tears, and that had been subject to many of Bokuto’s worst frustration outbursts over the years, he was glad he held onto them for a bit longer. 

September 19th was, year after year, a consistently awful day for Bokuto. His mind liked to reflect upon the past year, dive into everything he could have done differently, and he usually spent the morning in a state of self-pity, frustration, and dread. 

This morning he was lamenting over three things, the fact that he promised himself he would finally confess to Akaashi over his year as a 17-year old, a promise that was broken, the fact that he still didn’t feel like he had grown up, he still got called childish, he still couldn’t pay attention, he was still hyperactive and loud, he still hadn’t learnt how to slow down and mature, and the fact that he had no idea what was to come.

His mind was so deep in itself that it took him a few minutes to register the knocking at his bedroom door. 

“Bokuto-san? Your mother said you were in here?” Every single year for as long as they’d known one another he had spent September 19th with Akaashi, and he had still managed to forget. 

He opened his door to see that Akaashi was dressed in his usual black jeans and a white collared shirt with a navy, soft-looking sweater over the top. 

Bokuto had never wanted to wrap his arms around anyone as much as he did at this moment, but he kept still, a mantra of his own voice playing over and over, rushed, in his head ‘you know you can be overbearing, you don’t want to be too much, he will get scared and leave’. 

He stepped to the side to let his friend in and immediately realised that next to Akaashi he looked like a mess, wearing his old pajamas and eyes puffy with the evidence of a night spent crying.

“Akaashi! Hey, hey, hey! I- sorry about the pajamas, I kind of….” Bokuto avoided eye contact and let out a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I forgot again, the calendar was marked and all but… you know me.” 

Akaashi smiled gently and reached out for his hand, “Hey, I made sure to come earlier so that you’d have an hour before we need to go, and I’ve planned the entire day. Don’t worry.”

Bokuto could have cried, he loved his best friend, he loved him so much.

“Now go get ready, I’ll wait here.”

-

After a thorough shower, coffee, and changing into a clean outfit of black jeans, a black shirt, and his black and white checkered denim jacket, Bokuto felt worlds better. 

The presence of Akaashi helped, too. 

He had just put their mugs on the rack to dry with a smile that radiated sunshine when Akaashi gently spoke up from behind him “Don’t forget to make sure you have your wallet and IC card before we go.”

After a quick pat-down of his jeans, Bokuto realised he had left his IC card on his desk and ran up the stairs to his room, shouting a quick “Shit! Thanks for reminding me.” over his shoulder.

Akaashi smiled to himself, a lovesick little smile.

-

They walked to the train station together, Akaashi with his hands tucked into his pockets and Bokuto’s flying around wildly as he explained something funny that had happened in his math class earlier that week. 

“Oh, by the way! Do I get to know where we’re going yet?” He lowered his hands and started clenching and unclenching them by his side, an indication of his overwhelming excitement and energy, a sign that Akaashi had come to recognise over the course of their friendship.

Akaashi shook his head fondly “Only because we’re almost at the station.” The truth was that he really wanted to see Bokuto’s reaction and couldn’t wait, but he would definitely deny it if asked. “We’re going to Shibuya, to explore the shopping streets. I know you’ve wanted to go with me for a while now, so I thought maybe it would be nice to do it for your birthday.” 

“Akaashi?!” Bokuto stopped in his tracks and stared at his friend, all traces of the uncontainable excitement gone from his body within seconds, “Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? Please don’t do this if you don’t want to, I can figure something out right now instead! I really don’t want to go if it makes you anxious.”

Akaashi just reached for his hand and looked down toward the ground, trying to hide his furious blush, “Bokuto-san…” He sighed “I’ve had this planned for a while and I promise it’s okay, I took a sleeping tablet last night so I’ve had a proper sleep, I did all of my little self-soothing routines this morning,” He pulled out a wired headphone from underneath his neckline, “I’ve got these and a playlist ready in case I get overwhelmed, and” Akaashi looked up at Bokuto with a small upturn of his lips “You’re here, you know that helps.”

Bokuto held onto their eye contact and let out a small huff of laughter “Yes, yes, me and my big, scary, volleyball muscles. You know I’ll protect you, my young owlet.” 

Akaashi was silently grateful that his friend tried to move away from the topic, it wasn’t a secret to either of them that discussing his anxiety just led him to focus on it more, sometimes ending in a complete spiral. 

He held out a pinky, “I pinky promise that I'll be okay Bokuto-san, this is your day and I want to make it special, okay?”

Pinky promises were something they’d done since childhood, but over the past few years, the little gesture had become close to non-existent between the two. 

It was a small action, the action of intertwining your smallest finger with that of another, but to each boy, the emotional magnitude ran a lot deeper than just that. 

Bokuto wasn’t sure what falling in love felt like, but the way his heart felt like it was aching to jump out of his chest and into Akaashi’s soft hands, the way it felt like his entire being was yearning to hold this boy and never let go, he thought that might be a part of it.

“I’ll hold you to that promise.”

-

The train ride to Shibuya took thirty very, very long minutes. 

As per usual, they spent the ride as close to one another as they could get without it becoming borderline-inappropriate. Bokuto had one leg positioned protectively over Akaashi’s, an arm wrapped behind his neck, and was using his finger to trace shapes and small drawings onto his shoulder. 

They both knew it looked as though they were a couple, but it was usually worth the questioning, sometimes hostile, looks if it meant that Akaashi felt grounded, protected, and slightly distracted, and Bokuto was able to channel his need for movement into the finger tracing on Akaashi’s shoulder. 

Today was a bit different. 

Although the safety of one another’s body was nothing if not familiar, the newfound recognition of just how intimate they had become made Bokuto’s body charge with red, hot guilt. 

Was he taking advantage of Akaashi? 

In an attempt to stay still despite the racing, deafening thoughts zooming through his brain, Bokuto tensed all of his muscles and begged them not to move, not to do anything to make this worse. 

“Bokuto-san?” Akaashi’s quiet voice whispered up at him. 

He realised he had unintentionally gripped his friend’s shoulder in an effort to stop his hand from doing the weird, sporadic gestures it usually did when he was nervous. 

“Oh, shit, sorry ‘Kaashi.” He quickly withdrew his hand and looked down, guilt written all over his face, “Uh- the hand thing felt like it was going to happen, I was trying to stop it from hitting you or something… sorry.”

Akaashi leaned into his friend so that his voice couldn’t be overheard by the other passengers and smiled softly, “Are you okay? I have that Rowlet keychain in my bag if you want to fiddle with it.”

Bokuto Koutarou was fucked. 

He wanted to cry.

How could someone this kind, this considerate, and this loving possibly exist?

Akaashi Keiji was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Bokuto spent his early academic years stuck in a frustrating, degrading cycle of being told he wasn’t a good student, that he didn’t care about school, that he was loud and distracting, he was desperate to try and prove this wrong, he worked so hard day in and day out, only to be told that nothing had changed. He spent years wondering how the other students did it, how they could stay still and focused, could do their work on time, he didn’t understand how this was so normal for them when it was so, so painful for Bokuto.

The day he told Akaashi how hard this was for him was one of the only clear memories in Bokuto’s head. He was fourteen, Akaashi was thirteen, and they spent an entire Saturday sitting on his floor as Bokuto translated these thoughts and frustrations into cohesive sentences. He had tried to tell people before, but the words were never right and he just got told to buy a calendar and sit away from his friends during class time, this wasn’t the case with Akaashi.

Akaashi listened intently, held his hand, and occasionally wrote down notes into his naruto-themed journal, ‘What are you? A journalist? Perhaps a therapist?’ Bokuto had teased. 

By the time Akaashi’s parents knocked on the door and let them know it was time for him to leave for dinner, Akaashi had already hugged his best friend tightly and promised that he would do something to help. 

And that is why, right now, upon hearing Akaashi’s offer of the keychain to help ease his ADHD-induced need to fidget, Bokuto lets himself think, for a feeble moment, that perhaps they were made for one another. 

He quickly berates himself for that thought and lets his mind fall down to earth.

“Thank you, Akaashi! I would appreciate that very much!” 

The ‘I appreciate you very much’ that Bokuto wishes he could say goes unsaid. 

-

Shibuya station was an overwhelming, sensory attack for even the most stoic of people, there were crowds moving in each and every direction, and Boktuo had never felt more alert.

He was heightened from the energy bouncing off of every surface and was trying to project all of that onto making sure his friend felt safe, shielding his body and trying as hard as one could to keep him grounded, but the distractions were inevitable. 

He managed to get Akaashi out of the station and onto a side street without any major problems, but didn’t relax the arm curled protectively around him or make any move to create distance between the two.

“Bokuto-san?”

He hummed an answer, but his focus was darting from one billboard to another, neon lights dragging his attention this way and that. 

“I won’t have a day that I planned go to waste because someone doesn’t want to let go of me or move at all, because he’s too worried I'll have a panic attack.”

Bokuto’s attention snapped back in a heartbeat.

“Right, right, okay, yes!” He untangled himself from Akaashi but the other boy reached for his hand before they were separated completely. 

“There we go, now, I read about this toy store a few streets away that has an entire room dedicated to owls, should we start there?” 

Bokuto nodded, a wide grin nearly splitting his face in two, and began to walk beside his friend. “You know you’re my favourite person in the world right?”

Akaashi just scoffed “I’m going to tell your mother you said that.”

-

The toy store was absurdly large, it was three stories high and the top floor was animal-themed with many separate rooms dedicated to a single species.

They walked around for a bit, hand in hand, admiring the adorable plushies and reading out fun facts painted on the walls until they finally found the owl room. 

Bokuto loved owls, initially, the interest had stemmed from the fact that they were his volleyball team mascot but it quickly became a hyperfixation. 

This was something Akaashi adored about Bokuto, when he was interested in something he dedicated himself to it. Sometimes, if Bokuto sensed that he was getting anxious but didn’t want anyone to know, he would start rattling on about owls to divert the focus of the people around them, talking excitedly about the many, many facts that were stored in his brain and throwing Akaashi occasional looks to make sure he was doing alright.

Bokuto held up a gigantic owl plush and squeezed it tightly, “Look Akaashi! Oh my gosh, it’s almost as big as me!” 

Akaashi laughed and reached into his back pocket for his phone, aiming the camera at Bokuto and the oversized owl plush with a content smile. 

Bokuto smiled with the cheeriness of a thousand suns, put up a peace sign, held the owl close, then waited for his friend to add some stickers and post the photo to Instagram before they went back to exploring the room. 

Akaashi kept his gaze on his friend as he swooned over the miniature plushies and pointed out distinguishing factors between different types of owl. 

They stayed like this for a little while, Akaashi watching Bokuto with an expression of wonder while Bokuto navigated the room around them with his own. 

“Hey, ‘Kaashi, look!” Akaashi’s train of thought broke and he looked down into Bokuto’s hands, which were holding a delicate little snowglobe. 

He held it up to their faces and each boy looked into the globe, the snow was swirling from Bokuto’s quick movements and there was a small ornamental tree branch with two owls sitting on top. 

A large silver and black owl next to a smaller, dark brown one. 

“Bokuto-san! That looks just like us!” He met the other boy’s eyes over the top of the snow globe and saw that Bokuto was nodding with a grin. 

“Do you want it? I was going to get you a present while we’re in Shibuya anyway,” Bokuto was hit by a truck of emotions at this, and his face was never any good at hiding them, which is why Akaashi’s question was followed by a quick “I can get you something else though if you’d prefer! Don’t worry.”

“Akaashi, you know that taking me here today, that being with me today, will always be more than enough.”

Akaashi raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side, his unspoken response hanging obvious in the air. 

“Okay, yes, I really want it. But you have to let me buy you some fancy, non-convenience-store ice cream mochi!” 

They laughed together, hearts high on happiness, on love. 

Until Bokuto paused mid-laugh, face still flushed and bright, and let his eyes find Akaashi’s “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think this was a date.” 

Akaashi, completely blind to just how much Bokuto wanted this to be true, let out a smaller, more subdued laugh and looked away, “Come on, I’ll pay for this and then we can find somewhere that sells mochi.”

They left the store hand in hand, hearts beating in sync. 

-

It was difficult for Akaashi to walk the streets of such a busy area, but Bokuto kept an arm around him and talked his ear off about anything that came to mind so that Akaashi wasn’t getting lost in his own head. He looked over at Akaashi constantly, something he used to do with subtlety but had quickly given up on after realising how perceptive his friend was. Neither minded though, Akaashi was actually quite grateful that his friend showed he cared this much. 

They walked for a while, finally outside of the busiest streets, when Bokuto spotted a pastel-coloured sweets store a few metres away and tugged Akaashi closer, steering them toward the entrance. “This place should have some, come on!”

-

They left the store with two ice cream mochi in hand, chocolate for Akaashi, and strawberry for Bokuto. 

There was an uneventful little park area over the road, the type of park dotted with benches and created for couples to stop and have a moment while on their dates or for families to let themselves rest for a second.

“Should we go sit over there?” Bokuto suggested, and Akaashi nodded in agreement.

They found a nice bench and, as always, sat as close to one another as they could without it becoming inappropriate. 

They sat in peace for a few moments, basking in the comfort and warmth of one other while taking slow bites of their sweet, cold dessert. It was a picture-perfect moment, the trees painted a picturesque background of golden hues, the remnants of summer were shown in the sunlight that illuminated each boy, and happiness radiated in waves from the bench they were sat upon. 

Everything was still, everything was perfect, together they made a painting that could have been created by a master, hung in the finest of galleries. 

Once done, Bokuto lowered his hands and waited patiently for Akaashi to finish his own snack. At this point, he usually would have been using his eyes to explore the scene around them, but his mind could only focus on one thing. 

Akaashi finished and turned to Bokuto with a look of pure satisfaction. 

They stayed like this, smiling, happy, together.

Until Akaashi spoke up, a rose-coloured flush creeping onto his cheeks, “Bokuto-san…?”

“Akaashi?” 

They were still facing one another, holding one another’s gaze, but the air of satisfaction had shifted to something noticeably heavier. 

“Maybe... I kind of wish it was?”

Bokuto waited for his friend to elaborate, but was left confused when he didn’t speak up again, “‘Kaashi, what’s up?”

Akaashi dropped his gaze and brought his hands to his face in a futile attempt to cover the blush setting his face aflame, “Before, in the store, you said if you didn’t know me any better you’d think this was a date.”

Bokuto reached out for one of the hands Akaashi was using to hide his face, coaxing it away and then sliding his own hand underneath Akaashi’s chin. “Akaashi, are you saying what I think you might be saying?” 

At the sound of Bokuto’s uncharacteristically soft and careful voice, he looks back up. “I, yeah, I am.”

Bokuto, always the initiator, leans down and pauses just before Akaashi’s lips in a silent question of consent. 

Akaashi tilts his head up to eliminate the last few millimetres of space between them. 

The kiss was sweet, it was sunshine, it was chocolate and strawberries, it was years of patience and years upon years of blooming love. 

They pulled away slowly and together, neither wanting to put an end to this. 

“I love you, Akaashi, I’ve loved you forever.”

“I love you too, I always have.”

“Happy Birthday.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thankyou again for reading <3  
> Feel free to let me know what you think! I’d love feedback :)


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